Anne led group in worship…
Pastor Ray shared…
I want to share something from this book about His presence by Pastor Bill Johnson. The chapter is called “Can God Come to Where He Already Is?” Have you ever thought about that? If we’re filled and if He’s here, can we ask Him to come where He already is? That’s the question that he gives some answers to.
Some are bothered when we talk about God coming into a situation, His Spirit falling upon us, or the Holy Spirit moving in a meeting, etc. Often, as we get ready to minister to people, we will invite the Holy Spirit to come, in the John Wimber fashion. The question is, “Why invite God to come when He is already here?” It’s a good question. It makes no sense whatsoever to pray that way unless we understand that there are different measures and dimensions of God’s Presence. When He is here, there is always more to come. It’s important to hunger for and invite that increase. Isaiah had a perception of this reality saying, “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple” (Isa. 6:1). The word “filling” implies that His robe filled the temple, but then continued to fill it. He came, but He kept coming. There is always more!
This is at least a partial list of these measures of His Presence; each one is an increase of the previous.
- God first inhabits everything and holds all things together (see Col. 1:17). He is everywhere, the glue that holds His creation in place.
- A second dimension of God’s Presence is His indwelling Holy Spirit in the lives of those who have been born again. He specifically comes to make us His tabernacle.
- A third dimension is seen when believers gather in His name. As He promised, He is “there in their midst” (Matt. 18:20). This is where the principle of exponential increase comes into play.
- A fourth measure or dimension occurs when God’s people praise Him, for He says He “inhabits the praises of His people” (see Ps. 22:3). He is already in our midst but has chosen to manifest Himself upon us more powerfully in that atmosphere.
- A fifth measure is seen when the Temple of Solomon was dedicated: God came so profoundly that priests were incapacitated (see 1 Kings 8:10–11). No one could even stand, let alone play instruments or sing. They were completely undone at that measure of Presence.
I mention these five levels only as principles, in an effort to give a snapshot of how He longs to increase His manifestation upon His people. The day of Pentecost and the gift of the baptism in the Holy Spirit may, in fact, illustrate all of these principles combined as an entire city came under the influence of God’s manifest Presence.
These various measures of Presence are recorded both in history and in Scripture. Reformation and revival history shows us what’s available. The responsibility for the measure of God’s Presence that we carry lies with us. We always have what we earnestly want.
Annie led group in worship…
Erika shared…
[reading from “The Strong Man’s Way to God”]
Musicians talk of an ultimate note. That is a note you will not find on any keyboards. It is a peculiar note. A man sits down to tune a piano, or any fine instruments. He has no guide to the proper key, and yet he has a guide. That guide in the note that he has in his soul. And the nearer he can bring his instrument into harmony with that note in his soul, the nearer perfection he has attained.
There is an ultimate note in the heart of the Christian. It is the note of conscious victory through Jesus Christ. The nearer our life is tuned to that note of conscious victory, the greater the victory will be evidenced in our life.
In my ministry in South Africa, there was a young lady, one of the most beautiful souls I have ever known. She was baptized in the Spirit when perhaps only seventeen or eighteen years old. One of the remarkable developments in her after her baptism in the Spirit was that the Spirit of God would come powerfully upon her on occasions, and at such times she would sit down at the piano and translate the music her soul heard. Other times, the Spirit would come upon her so powerfully that she would be caused to sing the heavenly music in some angelic language.
God gave her the gift of interpretation, so that quite frequently when the Spirit would come upon her, she would re-sing the song in English, or Dutch as the case might be. Her father and mother were both musicians. They soon learned that when the Spirit thus came upon her, they could record the music. The father would stand at one side and take the words of the song as she sang them, while the mother stood at the other side and recorded the music as she played the music on the instrument. In this way, a great deal of the music was preserved.
Some years later, Clara Butts, the great prima donna, came to Africa. She was singing at the Wanderers Hall in Johannesburg. One evening after the concert, while being entertained at the hotel, I was introduced to her. She said to me, “Mr. Lake, I have been very anxious to meet you, for I have heard that among your people is a remarkable woman who receives music in the Spirit, apparently of a different realm than ours.”
I said, “Yes, that is a fact.”
She inquired if it would be possible to meet her, and so a meeting was arranged.
One evening, we went to her hotel, and as we sat down, Clara Butts said to the young lady, “I wish you would sit down and play some of the music I have heard about.” She did not understand that such music only came at such times as the Spirit came powerfully upon the woman. However, the young lady sat down at the piano.
I said to the company, “Let us bow our heads in prayer.” As we did and waited, presently the Spirit of God descended upon her, and then there poured through her soul some of that wondrous, beautiful, heavenly music. I waited to note the effect on the company. When the song was finished, I looked especially at Clara Butts, who was weeping silently. She arose to her feet, and coming forward to the piano she reached out her hands, saying, “Young lady, that music belongs to a world that my soul knows little about. I pray every day of my life God may permit me to enter. In that realm is the ultimate which my soul sometimes hears, but which I have never been able to touch myself.”
Beloved, in the Christian life, in the heart of God, there is an ultimate note. That note which is so fine and sweet and true and pure and good that it causes all our nature to respond to it, and rejoices the soul with a joy unspeakable.
All down through the ages some have touched God and heard that ultimate note. I believe that as David sat on the mountainside as a boy, caring for his father’s sheep, God by the Spirit taught him the power and blessing of that ultimate note. I believe at times that his soul ascended into God so that many of the Psalms of David are the real soul note of that blessed expression of heavenly music and heaven consciousness which came into the soul of the shepherd boy.
Erika interjected: He goes on to comment about the virgin Mary when she met her cousin Elisabeth and Elisabeth began to say, “My soul does magnify the Lord and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.”
It was the spirit of the Lord. Her spirit had ascended, bless God, into the heavenlies. Her spirit had touched heaven’s note. Her spirit was receiving and reproducing the song of joy that she heard, possibly of the angels, or perhaps intuitively from the heart of God.
There is a Christianity that has that high note in it, bless God. Indeed, Christianity in itself, real Christianity, is in that high note of God, that thing of heaven that is not of earth and is not natural. Bless God, it is more than natural. It is the note of heaven. It comes to the earth. It fills the soul of man. Man’s soul rises into heaven to touch God, and in touching God receives that glorified expression and experience into his own soul, and it is reproduced in his own life and nature.
Beloved, there is a victory in God, the victory that characterizes the common walk of a high born Christian. It is the strong man’s salvation. It is the salvation that comes from God because of the fact that the spirit of man touches the Spirit of God and receives that experience that we commonly speak as of the blessing of salvation from God.
But beloved, the soul that receives from God into his spirit that heavenly touch, knows, bless God, he does not have to be told by man, he knows by the Spirit of God that he has become the possessor of the consciousness of union with the Spirit of God which has enlightened his hear, filled his soul with holy joy, and caused his very being to radiate with God’s glory and presence.
The hunger of my soul for many a long day has been that I might be able to so present that high true note of God, that the souls of men would rise up in God to that place of power, purity and strength where the presence and character and works of Christ are evidenced in and through them. There can be no distinction between the exercise of the real power of God as seen in Jesus and its reproduction in a Christian soul.
Anne led group in worship…
Prayed…
Father, the things that have taken place this week in Washington DC and the celebration of Rev. Graham’s life and Your name being lifted up in front of all of our leaders, I ask You today that this Presence, Your presence, would be manifested in a greater degree. That these things that are happening are just signs of the things that are to come and that we request and ask You, Father, that Your Spirit would saturate the White House. Every room, more and more and more. And we plead the blood of the Lamb over that place for cleansing, uncovering, revealing things that need to be revealed. Lies that have been spoken, inaccuracies. We come with the blood, we plead the blood. We cover all our leaders with the blood of the Lamb. Not looking at them as different parties but looking at them as one. We are one nation under You and we will to be divided up. So we declare this morning that in Your presence, Your manifested presence, this nation would come together like never before. We declare it. We believe it. We expect to see it. Change after change after change. … answers and divine revelation for all of our leaders beginning with our President. … supernatural revelation from heaven… Thank You, Lord… we worship You…
